City watch.

Part of Montrose Beach is for the birds

August 14, 2001|By Jon Anderson, Tribune staff reporter.

To a casual observer, the fenced-off stretch of sand on Montrose Beach near the breakwater is, well, just another stretch of sand. For shore birds, some from as far away as Siberia, it's been like a major resort hotel.

Patrolled by lifeguards and protected by wire fencing, the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary has been open to the fly-in crowd since late July. Quietly, members of the Chicago branch of the Audubon Society toured the area Saturday.

It was a morning of considerable wonder.

"Here we are, in the third largest city in the United States, and we've got 25,000 feet fenced off for shore birds," said Jim Landing, speaking with the authority of a man who can spot "a young female redwing blackbird, probably eight weeks old" at a distance of a hundred paces, without the aid of binoculars, telescope or bird book.

"Adult Caspian, out over the water," added Carol Nelson, chairwoman of the conservation committee of the Audubon group, which has 5,400 members. Nelson was in charge of the outing, which took a dozen birders out to the sanctuary, beyond areas reserved for bathers, swimming dogs and hundreds of young persons, in summer plumage, playing volleyball.

The visiting birds, protected by the fence, ignored the distractions and picked through the broken-off portions of lake plants that had washed up onshore, looking for bugs, shells, bits of fish and other delights.

"We get European birds in Chicago, little gulls and black-headed gulls coming down the St. Lawrence River," Landing said. "We get birds from Siberia, like Curlew sandpipers, passing through here on migration from the Bering Straits to the southeastern U.S. and on to the West Indies. We also get birds from South America."

For Saturday's birders, who came from as far away as Barrington, the spot of the day was a Baird's sandpiper, on its way from the Canadian Arctic to South America, stopping off in Chicago to rest, feed--and catch its breath, unmolested.

"We have the sanderling in Europe," said Olivier Boissier, a visiting high school student from Paris who has birded in the forests near that city and in the French Alps.

"A year ago you'd be running up with your scope or binoculars and up would come a dog and it would be `Goodbye, bird,'" added Nelson. That is why a shore bird sanctuary is so important, she said.

Unlike migrating songbirds, who can fly up into trees and nest, she explained, shore birds follow the contours of Lake Michigan. "They need to land on a beach or a marsh habitat," she said. "They forage at water's edge. In urban areas, they are vulnerable to beach-goers, to dogs and other animals."

Chicago, she added, is the first city on the Great Lakes to do something for them.

The sanctuary boundaries will be in place until late October, after most fall migrants have passed through town. Park District planners then will assess its usage and decide whether to fence off the area again next summer.

The project is part of a larger rebuilding of Montrose Point to restore the luster of the original 1930s preserve laid out by Chicago Park District landscape architect Alfred Caldwell. The point will have hundreds of bird-friendly plantings, stone bird baths and watering holes, as well as a natural sand dune, a rarity in the city.

"If you wait 10,000 years, it will be as big as the Indiana Dunes," said Landing, noting that winds and low lake levels have shifted sands into a 15-foot mound from which cottonwood trees and shrubs are sprouting.

So, a newcomer wondered, how have shore birds found out about the new sanctuary, not having access to newspapers, radio or television? "It's visual," Landing said. "As they come down the lakefront, they see other birds sitting on the beach. They also have good enough ears to hear other birds for miles."